Plus, It’s Translatable, ADA Compliant

New Website Helps Citizens

Connect With Otsego County

By JIM KEVLIN • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com

COOPERSTOWN – On Otsego County government’s newly redesigned website, www.otsegocounty.com, you can read about board chair David Bliss or county Sheriff Richard J. Devlin, Jr., in Japanese.

Or in any of 90 other languages.

Also, adapting to new ADA requirements means the redesigned site will adjust to whatever the size of your screen might be, from hand-held to huge.

For now, this is what Otsego County IT Director Brian Pokorny most wants you to know:  Don’t Google if you’re looking for a county office or service.  Just go to www.otsegocounty.com and type it into the search line.

Google takes 90 days to “reindex” the site; meanwhile, visitors may be pointed to a “redirect” past or the page will not load at all, causing people to think the site down.  This will soon go away, Pokorny said.

The county’s original web site was launched in February 1999, 20 years ago.  “It’s had a few minute updates, never a major facelift,” said Pokorny, and it was generally realized it was overdue.

A few months, the IT director was looking ahead to his 2020 budget, but quotes he received to redo the site were in the $40,000-50,000 range.  Then Revize Software, Troy, Mich., entered a bid for “under $10,000,” and Pokorny realized he might be able to find money in his 2109 budget, and did it now.

By the time Revize was done, it had transferred 8,000 pages and documents from the old site to the new.

“When people come to our website,” said Pokorny, “they are not buying something.  They aren’t looking for entertainment.  They are looking to find a service or get in touch with each other.”

In the new site, there’s the traditional search bar.  But there’s also an “I want to …” feature that helps people get to the information they need.

A calendar of county events, the strategic plan and other key documents on on the home page as well, which is bright, clean and illustrated with photos of county scenes.  (Pokorny is considered a photo contest to solicit an array of images from around the county.)

You may be interested to know the Real Property Office, where you can access information about any property on the tax rolls, is most visited.  Second, the personnel office.  Third, the Board of Representatives’ documents — agendas, minutes and information on how to contact county reps.  Fourth, the district attorney’s Traffic Diversion Project.